Thread by @historykenya101

In the wake of schools fires & students unrest,we need remind them about a night of Horror or what Kenyans came to refer as the black Sunday. The events of night of 13th-14th July 1991 at St Kizito sec school in Meru county.

The death chamber that was a dormitory

***Thread***

St. Kizito was a coeducational boarding secondary school in Akithii Location, Meru County. It was named after Saint Kizito. The school was established in 1968. Initially, it began as an all-boys school and began admitting girls in 1975.

By 1991 the school had 577 students, between the ages of 14 and 18 – 306 boys and 271 girls. A combination of gender, that proved to be tragic and one that would cause stress and trauma for the longest time possible.

On the night of 13th July 1991, students, particularly boys, went on rampage, as they complained that they had been humiliated when the school administration failed to pay the fees necessary for their participation in an interschool athletic competition.

In previous weeks, the students from various schools in Meru district, had riots that ranged from bad food to no running water. The Weekly Review newspaper done by the late Hillary Ng'weno reported that Kirogo Secondary School students, rioted burning buildings,...

... invaded a girls' dormitory and "raped several of the girls, an incident that would be repeated at St Kizito, few weeks later. At another school, the boys were so upset at the food that they dumped the cook in a vat of porridge.

Fast foward to July 13th 1991, at St Kizito, the boys decided to stage a strike against the school administration led by the then principal Mr. James Laiboni. The girls refused to join the planned strike, an action which infuriated the boys, who began to threaten them.

The angry male students planned to teach the girls a lesson. To carry out their plan, they cut the electricity supply to the girls' dormitory causing a temporary blackout, then they went ahead to disconnect the phone line, so that no distress calls would be made.

A school worker said, some of the boys who were shrouded in sheets & armed with flashlights, headed to the girls dorms to pick several girls whom they suspected of having sexual relations with sch officials,as well as teach them a lesson for rejecting calls for the planned strike

Just after 9 p.m., the first clue that madness had broken out at the boarding school appeared when Massimo Ballottino's house, the administrator of the Tigania hospital, went dark. Once the boys cut the power, they began screaming & throwing rocks at the girls' dorms.

The dorms were made of cinder block and had tin roofs. The girls retreated to one dormitory, which had metal bars on the windows. The boys broke the windows with rocks and continued to terrorize the girls by tossing a barrage of rocks onto the tin roof.

Just before 2 a.m., the Rev. Alexander Kiranja, who ran a mission next door to St. Kizito, was awakened by "a most serious knocking" on his door, he said. It was the terrified watchmen,who told Kiranja that the boys were on a rampage and had threatened them with death by stoning.

By then,the boys had not yet broken down the dorm doors. Kiranja had no phone,so he took the watchmen next door to the hospital to call police. The priest said he did not go to the sch with the watchmen & try to restore order.They feared to enter the sch when the boys are unruly.

Back at school, The 271 girls of St. Kizito stuffed themselves into one dormitory. As the boys battered the door in an attempt to get to them, the girls rushed to the far corner of the room. The door finally, gave way and the boys rushed in.

"We were attacked as if by a pack of hungry hyenas," one girl later told reporters. The girls packed themselves into one corner. It was at this corner, where majority of the dead bodies, were found.

Around 3am,some girls managed to escape & run to the hospital. "They were in shock when they arrived," said John, a clinical nurse on duty that night. "They said there was a riot at the sch & the boys were beating them. They were complaining of pains & said they had been raped."

By 3:30, the hospital was overflowing with injured girls. Finally the police arrived and went to the now-deserted school. Ballottino drove an ambulance to the school with the police.

They discovered the 19 bodies piled atop one another. They had suffocated. "I have never seen anything like it," Ballottino said. "It was like civil war. There were bodies everywhere. They were already stiff. The doctor said they had been dead about three hours."

Autopsies showed that none of the dead had been raped.On that day, 14th July 1991,Moi visited the sch,& saw the shocking horror that had left the whole nation in grief.Demanded for The closure, as 39 boys were apprehended in connection to the strike,rapes & death of the girls.

Three things shocked the nation, following the investigation into the St Kizito horrors. The Principal's revelation, the deputy principal's remark to President Moi and the saddest part, the police contribution in the whole event.

The principal, James Laiboni, told the reporter for The Kenya Times, "In the past, the boys would scare the girls out of their dorms & drag them to the bush where they would 'do their thing' and the matter would end there, with the students going back to their respective dorms."

Basically, the principal was trying to tell the nation, that rape was just a norm around the school and it was a known secret.

The deputy principal, Joyce Kithira, was quoted by the same Kenya Times, as having told President Daniel arap Moi that "THE BOYS NEVER MEANT ANY HARM AGAINST THE GIRLS, THEY JUST WANTED TO RAPE." Yes, you read that right.

The saddest part of the St. Kizito story is that it could have been prevented if police had reacted more quickly to reports of a disturbance at the school. Several teachers who board at the school could have stopped it but were too terrified of the 306 male students.

Two night watchmen, armed with bows and arrows, did not attempt to stop the assault on the girls' dormitory because the boys stoned them and chased them off.

And what of the police? About midnight,two teachers managed to escape the school grounds & run to a police station, 15 minutes from the school.Two hours later the police still had not arrived, & the watchmen called the station from a nearby hospital where they had run for safety.

"The police said they were aware of the situation, but they said they had no petrol and couldn't come," said Massimo Ballottino, who later said the police finally arrived about 3:30 a.m. By then it was too late since a total of 19 girls were already dead.

The aftermath of all this, was some of the boys cooling their bodies in the prison. And worse form of justice was applied by the parents of the girls, who were raped and those who were killed. Traditional forms of justice was sought.

The main perpetrators and everybody who participated in the madness is either dead, or walking around the market today as a mad man.

Becoming a mad man for the entire life, just because of stupid mistakes in school. Students, beware. Justice can come your way badly.